True, but couldn't the same be said about the real world to some degree? Everything "new" is based on something existing, right? Even in sci-fi/fantasy movies which are completely wild, completely "out there", the things in them are conjured by us, which is in some way shape or form based on our imagination, which is based in the reality we exist within.
My point is, that feedback loop you speak of already exists, it's just that... there are SO much variation, content, possibilities... but the same thing could be true for AI generated content in some sense. Feed it all our assets (sounds, music, movies, images) and then let it go bananas... :) - you'll have as much variation in the digital world as we do in our real world.
In the most literal sense it is true. We have experiences, DNA, senses and so by definition we're a product of the past. But in the very concrete sense when we make a piece of art we don't just go stuff in, stuff out. We express intent, coherent narrative, inner emotion, and so on. And that's really not what these ML systems do right now.
I think it's a little bit like crowdsourced art. There's these online experiments where you write a story but every user only places one word. It's grammatically correct, but the result is terrible. Because fiction in a way comes from a kind of singular intent and mind. (actually important point to note here, if 10k fully intelligent people make a democratic work of art with all their variety it's almost certainly worse than one doing it)
I'm not saying we won't have at some point a real AI of human complexity but if capable of good art it'd look like a real mind, not just vomiting's out the average of all great novels or something.
I agree about lack of a "higher goal" in most games, same old basic recipes. I always think of a MMO-type game where you have really well made AI that can attack cities, little villages and things like that. This should happen in a none-scripted way, and that players then have to help each other out and combat these invasion type of things. This would give more purpose than "get to the next level" sort of scenario.
Games before used to "feel" mysterious. I am looking at you Ultima, Everquest and perhaps Anarchy online. Initially there was no guides or answers, you had to really explore and this made the world(s) feel mysterious. Anything could happen. Nowadays the entire game is datamined, guides are written and everything is known even before released, very sad. Perhaps "streaming" games could solve this issue, where no assets are present on no client, just a real time stream ala stadia. But, I suppose latency, graphics quality, etc makes this hard.
Don't just live for the future. Life happens now, not at retirement. In my experience talking to people who has retired, many are bored and are struggling with purpose. Sure, there are certainly many exceptions. I just mean, don't forget to live right now, this is it, it happens now.
You should dabble in gamedevelopment, lots of room for innovation. Often you'll end up implementing some custom algorithm or solution where there were no previous library X that solved your exact problem. Sure, there are obviously lots of engines, algorithms, libs, standards here too... but I think it's one of the areas where you often have to come up with some new creative solution. At least, most of it is not CRUD ;-)
Canvas and webgl is lovely in the way it quickly lets you get something on the screen... Pixel pushing on canvas is, easy and accessible.
It makes me wonder if anyone has created some sort of port to a standalone app with no browser involved where you could use javascript/canvas-api/webgl to draw pixels on a canvas-like surface... without the fatness of the browser. Just spawning some window, that would be a lovely scripting/game-dev environment, maybe with some sdl-bindings or whatever. Anyway just rambling, does such a project exist? Anyone knows? :)
I built exactly that a few years ago: V8 with WebGL bindings that passed through to OpenGL ES. It was to enable WebGL experiences on the GearVR, where a full browser wouldn't cut it.
I've got sample using an OS X window but it should be easy enough to do the same for Windows
It's been sitting in a private repo since then but I can give you access if you'd like
That being said, I think a better alternative for a thin graphics scripting environment would be haxe with Lime or snowkit (which provides OpenGL, SDL and windowing). I've used these in the past and loved working then
Now we just need a way to connect sublime text 2 or 3 directly to the chrome-console, so that when you edit files in sublime, they are magically used instantly without page refresh - now that would be bliss....
It means "fuck me" (repeatedly) in Slovenian :) But I guess if Ford* can't be bothered to check it's car names that a small startup will be even less likely to do it.
If it's supposed to be Japanese, it would be pronounced key, not kai. I'm not sure if it even means anything, though. GIS makes it appear that フキメ may have something to do with fishing lures, but it's not in my dictionary.
I think this may be partly true, I mean see Google+ as being way more professional than Facebook.
If Facebook is the party of Saturday night with lots of cursing and drunk people, Google+ feels more like the Sunday golf session with friends or colleagues.
Seems like the idea behind "Circles" is that it can be both.
"Sharing the right stuff with the right people shouldn’t be a hassle. Circles makes it easy to put your friends from Saturday night in one circle, your parents in another, and your boss in a circle by himself, just like real life."
Yeah, I mean I certainly hope so, I am kind of tired of facebook, Google+ feels right. It's sort of like when everyone had hotmail, then everyone switched to gmail.
What was gmail that hotmail wasnt or didnt have? Well no spam... clean interface, did I say no spam? ;) and some more of those goodies, one can hope this may be something similar.
If I have just one criticism of google+ so far, it's that the look-and-feel is just a bit too white and sterile at the moment. It feels like hanging out with your friends in a hospital waiting room.
Of course that's partially just that there's not much going on there yet, compared to facebook... but the other part is a page design issue. Facebook feels more intimate partly because of the use of colour, but partly because of the small fonts and lack of white space and photos everywhere.
Aside from that, the "Circles" feature is precisely the right functionality. Why yes, I would love to be able to sort my "friends" into "people I've met at least twice" vs "people I actually like" vs "people I actually like who also live locally" and so forth.
edit: Oh, and one other major criticism: it's picky about browser, and won't work on either of my work machines. I can understand it not liking the Firefox 2.0.0.12pre that I have on my desktop machine, but the Firefox 3.5 on this laptop can't be that out of date, can it?
On the other hand, that could be a feature too. If facebook didn't work on my work machine I'd probably be more productive.
>Facebook feels more intimate partly because of the use of colour, but partly because of the small fonts and lack of white space and photos everywhere.
On the other hand, I really love the page design of Plus because it's nowhere near as claustrophobic as Facebook. The larger fonts and increased whitespace make me tend to slow down and read more carefully whereas I have a tendency to simply skim over Facebook posts as quickly as possible. I definitely appreciate the large photo thumbnails, too.
I don't know, it's kind of hard to put my finger on, but I'd almost say the layout feels more relaxed to me.
FWIW, Andy Hertzfeld was the UI lead on the whole project.[1]
>but the Firefox 3.5 on this laptop can't be that out of date, can it?
FF5 was just released and FF4 won't be receiving any future updates, security or otherwise. Not supporting older versions seems in line with Google's rapid iteration approach.
My point is, that feedback loop you speak of already exists, it's just that... there are SO much variation, content, possibilities... but the same thing could be true for AI generated content in some sense. Feed it all our assets (sounds, music, movies, images) and then let it go bananas... :) - you'll have as much variation in the digital world as we do in our real world.